Lockdown on Rikers

by Ms. Mary E. Buser

  It was on the heels of my departure from the hotline that I enrolled in the clinical track at Columbia’s School of Social Work. In preparation for our first field assignment, we were asked to rank our top three picks among a number of options. As I scanned the predictable list of settings, I spotted “Correctional Facility.” As soon as I saw it, I smiled, recalling those Wednesday nights in the Charles Street Jail. The years had done little to dim my memory of the Samaritan inmates. Had they been released? I wondered. If so, how were they faring? What if I was able to help inmates like them in a deeper way? While they may have committed crimes, the incarcerated were still people—people capable of growth and compassion—as the Samaritan inmates had demonstrated. What if I could sit down with them and really listen to their stories? Insightful therapy sessions could lead to change—change that would translate to happier, jail-free lives following release. A win-win for all!

  I didn’t really need to think about it for long. In the box next to “Correctional Facility,” I inked in the number 1.

  * * *

  I was lost in thought, trying to imagine what the year ahead would bring, when a white Bonneville pulled up. Inside were three of my fellow students, all of whom I’d met during a series of orientations for this unusual assignment. Unlike me, they were none too pleased. In the back was Allison, freshly graduated from college. Allison had battled unsuccessfully for a transfer to a more conventional setting, and as I hopped in next to her, she stared ahead through steel-rimmed glasses, barely managing a smile. In the front was Maureen, a middle-aged woman with short, dark hair who’d raised her family and was fulfilling a lifelong dream of helping the impoverished. Although initially apprehensive about Rikers, once she learned her clientele would be female, Maureen was content. But our driver, Wendy, with a ginger-colored bob and a smattering of freckles, was not. “I never said anything about wanting to work in a jail!”

  Wendy was outraged. “And those supervisors! I mean, come on! It’s one thing to be forced into this for school, but to choose it! Either they’re out of their minds or they’re loo–sers!”

  “Yes,” Allison agreed, “losers!” Maureen chuckled, and I said nothing.

  The supervisors they referred to were members of the Rikers Mental Health staff who had come up to school to meet us. Each of us had been paired off with one of these veterans who would oversee our work in the year ahead. My supervisor was a tall Black woman named Janet Waters. With a stately bearing and a quiet dignity, she smiled shyly when we shook hands. “I think you got yourself a good assignment, Mary,” she said in a soft drawl that hinted at her Alabama roots. I liked Janet immediately. Anything but a loser, here was someone with a sense of purpose—exactly what I’d hoped for in a supervisor! I didn’t really know what I was getting into, but meeting Janet felt like an affirmation that I was on the right track.

  With the Manhattan skyline fading behind us, we crossed the Queensboro Bridge and drove through the tree-lined streets of Queens and its neat brick houses, a rather unlikely route to what was then the largest correctional facility in the nation. Yet not one sign hinted that the massive complex was nearby. With maps to guide us, we found our way to an intersection in the quiet neighborhood of East Elmhurst, where a billboard jutted out, announcing the Rikers entryway. Shields and emblems shaded in the Department of Correction’s colors of orange and royal blue flanked either side of the huge sign. Prominent city officials were listed at the top, and underneath were the names of ten jails—nine for men, one for women. Scrolled across the bottom was the Department of Correction’s proud motto: “New York’s Boldest!”

  Around a corner, a long, narrow bridge stretched out over the gray water, guarded by a couple of security booths. A man in a navy blue uniform stepped out as we pulled up. “Good morning, Officer,” we chimed, holding up silver beaded chains with our newly issued ID badges attached. We were under strict orders to address correctional personnel as “Officer,” or “CO,” referring to their title of Correction Officer. Operating in the shadows of the touted NYPD, the jails’ keepers bristle at the word guard and gripe that they aren’t accorded due respect for patrolling New York City’s “toughest precinct,” especially since they don’t carry guns inside the jails. “Remember,” we were cautioned at the orientation, “You are guests in their house!”

  The man did not respond to our friendliness; instead, he leaned into the car window, studying the IDs, carefully comparing our photos to our faces. There would be nothing cursory about this inspection. Without smiling, he stepped back and waved us on.

  The narrow span rose up as we drove over the dark waters of the East River. Choppy waves slopped against the pilings, and seagulls cawed and hovered about the lampposts. In the heavy mist, the blinking lights of the runways at nearby LaGuardia Airport were so close that jets hurtling for takeoff appeared to be gunning right for us before angling up sharply and thundering overhead. As we pressed on, the car filled with a rank odor from a sewage treatment plant on the Queens shoreline. We gasped and ran up the windows, fast. “Geez,” said Maureen. “If the city was looking for a crummy place to put criminals, they sure found it!”

  At the crest of the bridge, we fell silent as the island unfolded like a bland industrial plant. Municipal-type buildings were scattered about, connected by a maze of roadways, each one encircled with chain-link fencing topped with rolls of barbed wire. A belt-type road skirted the perimeter, where security jeeps, throwing off long yellow beams, patrolled the river’s edge.

  Rikers Island was originally purchased by the city in 1884 from the Ryker family, descendants of seventeenth-century Dutch settlers. For most of its history, the island was little more than an overgrown forest. During the Civil War, it served as a training compound for African American regiments. After that, the island sat empty until 1933, when someone thought it would make an ideal spot to tuck away accused criminals, and the first jail, the House of Detention for Men, was built. For the next twenty years, the accused were ferried across the river to city courts to face their charges. In 1954, landfill enlarged the island from 87 to its present 415 acres. This expansion marked the beginning of Rikers’ development into a full correctional complex. In 1966, the three-lane, mile-long bridge was built, eliminating the need for ferries.

  As we came off the bridge and onto the island, lines of exiting cars, trunks popped open, awaited inspection before crossing back to Queens. Correction officers in yellow rain slickers were crouched next to the cars, extending long poles with attached mirrors underneath each one, checking for an inmate desperate enough to cling to the undercarriage of a car to make it across the bridge—a grim reminder that this was no industrial plant.

  We parked in a stadium-sized lot and walked to Control, a cavernous administrative building that visitors and workers must pass through before proceeding to the jail. Out in front, it was a chaotic scene as a city bus screeched to the curb and throngs of visitors exited, mostly dark-skinned women and frightened-looking children. One woman with a long braid looked up at me as she unfolded a flimsy stroller. With my pale skin and student backpack, I felt a little self-conscious. But she gave me a little smile, and I waved back. During our orientations, we had learned that Rikers is a jails complex. Unlike prisons, which house those convicted of crimes, jails house “detainees,” those who may well be innocent of their charges but cannot afford bail as they await trial. Since money is the sole factor in determining whether or not bail is attainable, by default Rikers houses the poor. In most cases, the bail amount is less than $1,000. Most of these women’s loved ones—primarily young Black and Hispanic males from New York City’s most impoverished neighborhoods—couldn’t scrape together even that.

  The inside of Control was nothing more than a scattering of graffiti-scarred benches, a cement floor, and a few birds swooping through the rafters. Along the walls, ominous signs warned against cameras, recording devices, drugs, weapons, and other contraband wit
h the threat of arrest for any violation. The idea that someone could be arrested while inside a jail complex struck me as a little funny, but no one here was amused. Long lines of tired visitors holding whimpering babies and lawyers in pinstriped suits waited at clerical windows for the necessary security passes. The four of us proceeded to rear turnstiles, where stone-faced COs once again compared our ID photos to our faces. With their grudging nods, we headed out to a bus depot and climbed aboard an orange-and-blue school bus bound for our destination, the Rose M. Singer Center.

  The bus churned down the main roadway, and we pressed our faces to the windows for our first close-up view of this stark “campus.” Large brick buildings with strange little slits for windows were situated haphazardly. Some were tucked back amid groves of trees; others sat closer to the road, with long armlike annexes reaching out to the curb. Smaller roadways fanned out from the main artery, accessing jails that were out of view. Each of these jails was governed by its own warden who oversaw a staff of deputy wardens (deps), captains, and a battalion of correction officers. The original House of Detention for Men stood prominently along the curb. A throwback to another era, the dark-brick HDM featured a cement stoop and a little yellow light over the front entrance.

  Around a bend, Department of Correction buses were parked inside maintenance garages. As we pressed on, the scent of leavening bread from the island’s bakery filled the damp, heavy air. An efficient world unto itself, the island was also strangely quiet, not an inmate in sight. We’d been told that recreation yards are contained within the interiors of the jails, meaning that inmates are never seen on the grounds. And since walking anywhere on the island was strictly forbidden for correctional personnel and civilians alike, the winding sidewalks and grassy lawns were eerily empty, save for flocks of grazing geese.

  At an intersection, we waited while a parade of buses, their windows covered in steel mesh, lumbered up from smaller lanes, headed for the bridge. As the caravan swung around the corner, I could just make out the silhouettes of male inmates. Each day, a staggering one thousand detainees are shuttled to city courts for hearings and trials. However, despite high hopes of beating their charges and going home, for most this bleak island is simply the first stop on the way to an upstate prison. Alongside the jails, commercial buses were parked in wait. As cases are resolved, these coach buses travel up the New York State Thruway, delivering the newly convicted to Downstate Correctional Facility in Fishkill, New York, a massive processing center. From there, they are farmed out to one of seventy prisons, where they will serve sentences ranging anywhere from a couple of years to life. And in capital cases, there were those on this island who potentially faced death row.

  After the bus traffic cleared, we turned down a tree-lined road that paralleled the river. Through the leaves of the old oaks and maples, the water rippled. Across the way, the Queens shoreline looked small and distant.

  The bus ground to a halt in front of a hulking rectangular building, the American flag fluttering high above. “Rose Singer!” shouted the driver. At the jail’s entryway, a female CO with fluorescent orange fingernails unlocked the door, checked our IDs, and admitted us into a bare-bones lobby furnished with a magnetometer and a small security desk. The yellow cinder-block walls were dominated by a framed portrait of Rose Singer, the jail’s namesake. With a wry smile and upswept gray hair, Rose Singer was a lifelong advocate for incarcerated women. At the jail’s dedication in 1988, she was quoted as saying that she hoped this facility would serve as “a place of hope and renewal for all the women who come here.” Although a curious sentiment for a jail, as I gazed up at her picture, I thought I would have liked Rose Singer, and took her wish as a good omen for my year ahead.

  2

  At the entryway gate, our supervisors were waiting. They helped us negotiate the main security booth, and when the big gate inched open, they led us into the Rose Singer halls, where looming cinder-block corridors reeked of pine-scented disinfectant. Barred gates were swung open, and navy blue–uniformed officers milled about, smoking cigarettes and chatting. There were no inmates in sight. Janet Waters, my superviser, explained that it was “count time,” one of several daily periods when inmates are confined to their houses to be tallied up to ensure there hadn’t been an escape.

  Our destination was the clinic, and as we proceeded through the halls, the officers stiffened at the sight of four unfamiliar faces, their eyes latching onto our photo IDs. Allison clutched her pocketbook tightly, Wendy rolled her eyes, and Maureen made a soft clucking noise. A light shiver ran down my back. This was not the Charles Street Jail.

  We stopped at a wide double doorway. Next to the entrance was a plain hinged door. Janet rapped on this smaller door, and it was snatched open by a stocky CO, big key ring at his waist. “Officer Overton!” Janet beamed. “Say hello to the new students—they’ll be with us for the next year.”

  But Officer Overton simply glared at us. “Baahhh” was about all he managed before returning to a corner desk where he kept watch over the Mental Health section of the clinic.

  Janet rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to him.”

  The clinic’s perimeter was lined with small offices for the staff—psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists of master’s degree level in either social work or psychology. Toward the rear was a makeshift conference room. With a rickety wooden table and a buzzing overhead light, this was the assigned space for the students, home base for the year. About the only point of interest were three small mesh-covered windows that ran the length of the outer wall. We threw our bags down and stood up on tiptoe to peer out. But other than a pile of broken cement and a chain-link fence, there was little to see, not even a tiny glimpse of the river. Allison slumped into a tan folding chair, pulled a calendar from her backpack and crossed off our first day, though it had barely begun. “One day down!”

  “Oh, girls,” Maureen smiled. “It’s just going to take a little getting used to.”

  “Oh, ho!” said Wendy. “There’s a lot we’re going to have to get used to.”

  After settling in, we split up to meet with our supervisors. As I took a seat in Janet’s office—a cramped cinder-block square she shared with a colleague—it occurred to me that jail affords no extra comforts to its civilian workers. But Janet didn’t seem to mind. Seated behind a battered metal desk in a smart burgundy suit, she looked as graceful and assured as I’d remembered her back at school. As she poured us some tea, she filled me in. “There’s over a thousand women in this jail, Mary—twelve hundred, to be exact—and the Mental Health Department is kept verrry busy. These women, they’ve been pulled away from home, family, children, and a lot of them are coming off drugs. They’re in a bad way, and it’s our job to get them stabilized, especially to prevent suicides—always a concern in here. We don’t get involved in their legal cases; we work independently of the courts. Our mission is to treat these women for however long they’re here on Rikers.”

  “You mean, until they go to trial?” I asked.

  “Well . . . until they leave. Very few go to trial, Mary. It’s not like TV. They usually accept a plea bargain offer, and then it’s off to Bedford Hills Prison.”

  “Oh,” I said, absorbing this surprising bit of information.

  “But for however long they’re here—weeks, months, or even years—we try to give them the best treatment possible. Most of them have had pretty crummy lives, you’ll see.”

  “Are we talking rehabilitation?” I asked.

  “Not exactly. More like stabilizing. We try to stabilize them with medication and therapy to get them out of acute crisis. But that’s not to say you won’t be doing in-depth work with some of them. It’s just a question of how long they’re here on Rikers.”

  As we sipped tea and chatted, a growing din in the corridors was turning into a roar. Janet glanced at her watch. “Count just cleared—they’re com
ing out of their houses now. Off to work, mess hall, the clinic. Let’s get started,” she smiled. “I’d like to show you the receiving room—it’s where the newly arrested are processed, issued IDs, given medical screenings, and assigned beds. There’s someone I need to check on. If she needs follow-up, I’ll assign the case to you. After that, we’ll visit the Mental Observation Unit—it’s where we house the suicidal and mentally ill. And while we’re there,” she said, “I have another case in mind for you.”

  As Officer Overton unlocked the clinic door, I was so taken with the idea of my own cases that I barely realized we were stepping into halls that were now crowded with inmates. Janet melded easily into a noisy throng that would have reminded me of a high school corridor between classes if not for the officers who stood watch—both male and female. I stuck close to her as we walked alongside women who bore the markings of hard lives—toothless smiles, ripped ear lobes, and jagged scars across their cheeks. The women were mostly young, and all were Black or Hispanic. The attire was jeans, sneakers, and sweats—permissible because they were detainees and therefore presumed innocent. But clipped to each woman’s shirt was also a big photo ID with a ten-digit case number beneath the photo.